Juliette Kang, a 4th grader from Germantown Friends who took one of the top awards, installs her art at Penn's Landing with family and friends. Credit: PDE.
Our Green City, Clean Waters 2015 Art Contest is a gift that keeps on giving.
Throughout August, we’ve been working with the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary to turn hand-drawn art submitted by local students into street art that's being placed near stormdrains in select locations across the city.
These fun, eye-catching installations, which originated from 1,300 student submissions, help spread an important message: only rain should go down the drain.
It might seem obvious to many of us, but for a long time, people thought of stormdrains as just another place to get rid of trash and, worse, unwanted household chemicals like motor oil from at-home oil changes, old paint and cleaning fluids. Because these sewers empty directly into the rivers and streams that provide wildlife habitats and our drinking water, that kind of dumping can be very harmful.
With their art, these students are helping to turn the tide on that kind of behavior and reminding all of us to make sure our street inlets are treated like what they are—direct links between our neighborhoods and waterways—and not like Dumpsters.
You can already find student art near Penn's Landing (in the Walnut Street Plaza, near the parking lot); at our Saylor Grove wetland installation in Fairmount Park; at Gifford Park (by the main park entrance) in the Far Northeast; at Picariello Playground (inside the playground) in the Morrell Park neighborhood; and at Lanier Park at 30th Street and Tasker in South Philly.
Over the next week, the creative output of these students will be affixed to the streets, sidewalks or other hard surface near drains in the following places:
| • Cobbs Creek Environmental Education Center, Catharine Street and Cobbs Creek Parkway • 30th Street Station, Market Street and 30th Street • Ralph Brooks Park, Fernon Street and 20th Street • McPherson Square, E Street and E. Indiana Avenue • Philadelphia Protestant House, Tabor Avenue and Martins Mill Road |
• Mt. Airy Church of God in Christ, West Chelton Avenue and North 18th Street • Max Myers Playground, Hellerman Street • Lanier Park, Tasker and 30th Street • Guerin Recreation Center, 16th and Jackson • Moss Park, 5700 Torresdale Avenue |
If you see some, take a photo and share it on social media with the hashtags #PhillyWaterArt and #CleanWaterArt and help spread this important message! As we do the installations, we’ll take photos and share them, so be sure to follow along on Twitter at @PhillyH2O and @DelawareEstuary.
